Brooklyn Diocese Seeks Sainthood for Priest Who Fought Bigotry

[nyc 4 Biden]

Source: New York Times

Brooklyn, the borough of churches and trees, Walt Whitman and Woody Allen, Barbra Streisand and Mike Tyson, has never lacked for people of distinction — except perhaps in one category. Nobody from Brooklyn has ever been made a saint.

But at a special church service on Thursday night, Bishop Nicholas A. DiMarzio of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn opened what is known as a “canonical inquiry” into the cause of sainthood for a Brooklyn priest, Msgr. Bernard J. Quinn.

Monsignor Quinn, who died in 1940 at age 52, championed racial equality at a time when discrimination against blacks was ubiquitous in America, even inside the Catholic Church. In the Depression-era heyday of the anti-Semitic, pro-Fascist radio broadcasts of the Rev. Charles E. Coughlin, Monsignor Quinn encountered sharp resistance from some fellow priests when he proposed ministering to Brooklyn’s growing population of blacks, many of them fleeing the Jim Crow South or migrating from the poor Caribbean countries.

“It seems to me that no church can exclude anyone and still keep its Christian ideals,” he said, according to his obituary in The New York Times. “The Constitution guarantees the freedom of religion and this, plus the fact that church property is tax exempt, ought to mean that anyone can go anyplace to worship.”

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/nyregion/25saint.html?scp=1&sq=bernard%20quinn&st=cse

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1. One of the good ones

Monsignor Quinn is the kind of Catholic that I like to remember as a spokesperson for Catholicism, and of Christ-like behavior.

Nowadays, when I listen to the Catholic radio station, it's all about:

* Anti-woman condemnation of reproductive health care rights and access.

* Anti-woman defense of the male priesthood.

* Anti-woman condemnation of women religious who want to serve God by serving the people, not by polishing monstrances and doing housekeeping at the rectory.

* Anti-humanity defense of celibacy.

* Anti-humanity condemnation of any sexual activity outside of marital procreation.

* Defense of regressives Ratzo and JPII and minimalization of the child abuse they sanctioned.

That's IT. There is NO OTHER CONTENT. It's all just contortions about sexuality and gender. Jesus, Mary and Joseph come in a poor second to the rants on the above 6 topics.